The Man in the Boat
by stefanie bean
Summary: What happened after the spiderweb curtain came down at the conclusion of The Music of the Night. 2004 POTO movie.


Sitting on one wing of the Apollo statue, on the roof of the Opera House, I surveyed the whole of Paris spread out before me. From the city rose a soft whispering chorus of sighs, all lifted heavenward, and occasionally from the mist of sound would emerge a prayer or a cry or a call in the night.

One such cry came to me from far below, from inside a carriage on the Opera Plaza. A baffled young man in evening dress sat sheltered from the winter wind and tore at his gloves. _Why is she so late?_ he thought repeatedly, full of pain and humiliation. _Who was that man in her loge with her? Some baritone, no doubt, with a chest like a barrel organ. Oh, I'm sure her "angel of music is very strict," indeed. _

He buried his face in his hands. _Why did she lie to me?_ _ She did have a man in there with her. No, that can't be, not the way she sang tonight, with the pure voice of an angel. But why, then? Did I find her again, just to lose her so suddenly?_

I put my hand gently on his back and his knotted muscles relaxed, so that he could lean forward and give his driver the order to take him home. As the carriage rode off into the cold, black night, I saw for him a dreadful morning ahead, a long sadness, and a wound that would not heal. But tonight, at least, he would sleep.

Up again I soared to the highest point of the roof, to find Gariela perched on one of Apollo's wings. As I joined her on the other wing, I noticed that the network of tiny lines and fissures of her face had grown even deeper. Like my own, I thought. Every time we touch a human sorrow, it cuts another line into us.

"Something is going to happen tonight, isn't it?"

"Or not happen," I replied. "Listen to the stones themselves in this building. They're trembling in fear, or anticipation. I cannot tell which."

We moved through the arching body of the vast structure, past the massive dim chandelier; around the paintings of putti and goddesses on its surrounding dome, and down into the cavernous auditorium framed with thick folds of soft, dark curtains. We brushed the twisted, veiled forms of bronze women, and the aching, stretching forms of the men, almost formless in the dark. We swept through the foyer with the gaslights dimmed for the night, but no air stirred with our passage.

We looked at each other for help, for we knew now of our task, and how deep we had to go. Gariela's kind look strengthened me, and down, down we went, until we came to the vast surface of the underground lake underneath the Opera, shimmering with glossy light.

We saw them at once. The man held himself erect, his fine frame carved in the perfect harmony of the Golden Ratio itself, defied only by the harsh asymmetry of the face hidden beneath a gleaming white mask. Song poured out into the air from his great chest as he punted the inky little gondola across the shiny subterranean lake. The fascinated, enthralled girl sat in front, surrounded with the gelid cloud of his love and desire.

He beached the boat on the shore of the cavern that contained the arabesque clutter of his rooms. The girl's face melted into delight as he embraced her from behind, moving his strong dark hands up and down her body as she leaned into him, feeling every contour.

"They are to come together tonight," Gariela said.

"They seem to be cooperating very well," I observed.

They mounted a set of stone stairs, and the girl looked at him with eager lust as he walked her over to a curtained closet.

"Uriel has touched him," I remarked.

"He has, and it went wrong," she replied. "He lied to the girl, telling her he was the 'angel of music.' She's full of self-deception, and she chose to believe this fantasy long after her senses and reason convinced her otherwise."

"Which is why you, as the gentle dispeller of illusions, are here. I wish I knew why I was."

"I have so often wished that they could see and hear us," Gariela sighed.

"It would just frighten them, and then they would simply do our will, not theirs. If they love, it has to be freely chosen."

Then, sensing something about to happen, Gariela flew to the girl's side and put her hand on the vivid curly head. The finely formed man pulled the curtain aside, to reveal a dressmaker's dummy with a wax head in the exact likeness of the girl herself. The sculpted form wore a cream-colored wedding gown and a long veil.

The girl's expression of lust turned to one of shock. "She's going to fall," I thought hard at the tall man, and he caught her quickly in his arms, lifting her body with tender care.

"She hasn't eaten all day," said Gariela. "And that corset is dreadfully tight."

"But that wasn't it, entirely, was it?"

"No. But you can't tell?"

I sensed the fine waves of feeling coming off the man, and regretted my slowness. This was so much more the field for Gariela's talents than mine.

"He had the wedding gown made for her," she said. "He offered it to her. But silence was her answer."

"To not choose is to choose."

With a sorrowful look, Gariela cradled the girl's unconscious head in her arms as the man carried her into his bedroom.

She amazes me, I thought. So often, I love them by force of will, and only with the direct help of the Lover who made them. However, she never even thinks about it. Unlike Uriel, or myself, she radiates pure compassion.

The man laid the girl's limp body down on the bed's soft velvet comforter, lowered the bed curtain, and walked halfway down to the great room below. Then he reconsidered, and came back up the stairs, to lift the curtain aside once again. This time he stood inside of it and stared with his mouth half open at the girl lying on the bed, with her dark-circled eyes closed, her body in the bright negligee all spread out before him, her hair streaming out on the pillow like a storm of dark curls.

"She's awake," Gariela said to me. "Mortals who faint don't remain unconscious after they lie down, unless they're terribly sick. They're made to wake up almost at once."

"But she neither rises nor speaks."

"No, she chooses not to see him," Gariela said. "That will be her sorrow."

The man briefly considered something, then removed his jacket and shoes carefully and quietly. His cufflinks clinked sharply when he set them down on a bedside table. He jumped, thinking she would open her eyes and cry out to see him there, but she made no sound or movement, and her eyes remained closed.

He still wore his mask, even though the irritation made him want to scratch underneath it. When he was convinced that she would remain still, he released a long, deep sigh.

I embraced him around the shoulders, and wrestled with the great column of passion and pain that welled up. This outpouring didn't require Gariela's subtlety to interpret. Uriel has touched you with his fire, I told him silently. But Uriel's touch sometimes burns and tears, and it has scorched you from the inside out. Into that serous opening a dozen black imps have crept, and they all torment you with the same lie, the lie of your "ugliness." They've blinded you for so long, you think the shadows and reflections you see on the walls of your cave are the truth. That's why you lied to her. That's why you hide your face from her, even now.

The slitted skirt of the girl's nightgown shifted to reveal her long, stockinged legs. He put his sizeable hand on one, and her flesh trembled, but she did not stir. Thick fingers, surprisingly deft and gentle in their movements for their strength and size, delicately and gently rolled the stocking down first over her bony knee, then her thin ankle. The bottom of her foot, like the stocking, was black and soaked where she had walked over wet stones. Then he brushed the skirt of the nightgown aside gently, to lower the other stocking, and abruptly his hand stopped cold in mid-air.

I looked up to Gariela, who still cradled the girl's head in her hands as it rested on her lap. She paid no attention to the dark man or me, as she sat with her forehead pressed up against the girl's, eyes shut tight with concentration. A stab of trepidation went through me, because that was how Gariela sat when she held one of the dying.

With the man, I saw what he had seen - the girl's curly, dusky smudge exposed between her long legs.

It did not move me as it moved him, but I felt the conflict tear through him as his hand hovered over her leg, and I heard the swallow as he grasped for control. Then his big fingers deftly grasped her other stocking and lowered it. Silently he sat there, waiting for a movement from her, a response, anything.

She shifted slightly and made a little sound, half-gasp and half-sigh, but acted as if she still swooned. A moment later he carefully slipped into bed next to the girl's inert form.

Gariela looked hard at me. "Damael, perhaps you should go. You are a masculine spirit, and not above temptation yourself."

"What about you," I fielded back lightly. "No feminine angel ever yearned for the touch of a mortal man?"

"So how many of us were there among the angels who looked at the daughters of men, lay with them, and sired a race of giants?" she asked quietly.

"None," I admitted. "But we were both sent, and both of us will stay."

I went around behind him and rested my head on the broad space between his shoulders. I had seen every intimate human action in hundreds of thousands of years - uncounted tendernesses, endearments, couplings, births. I had seen every size and shape of human body, at every age, and every conceivable scene from boudoir to bordello to hospital. No molecules of the human frame, no human actions of love were foreign to me, I told myself. This was no different.

Thus I attempted to recover my own control, to point my spirit toward the goal of helping the hearts of these two turn toward each other. His heart, at least, was turned toward her - as was every part and parcel of his straining flesh - but her heart was closed hard even as Gariela tried to soften it with her own warm balm.

He placed his hand gently on the girl's thigh, and his fingers walked up its lean expanse. She trembled again, her back stiff and every muscle waiting. He rubbed her thighs with gentle circular movements. He moved her skirt aside entirely, and punctuated every change of movement by a pause, to see what her reaction would be, to see how far he could take this.

"Gariela, even now he won't take off his mask."

"No, he won't," she said sadly. "I cannot convince him. Perhaps you can."

There were those of us who had joined their being to that of the human universe, in order to lie with a woman they loved. There were also those who, in fury over their inability to move the physical objects in the human universe, had begged the Lover to give them a human form, so they themselves could take those actions that a man or woman simply refused to accomplish.

Now for the first time I suffered that temptation. I wanted to rip the mask off his face and break it in front of him. I wanted to force the girl's lids open and make her look at him. But Gariela's mournful glance brought me back to myself, and so I sat with him as he finished stroking her legs, and moved his attention to her shadowy triangle.

All Gariela's spirit was centered on one thought, directed straight at the girl's being - open your eyes, open your eyes. If she would only open her eyes.

His hand found the softness within the shadow and went down to the wet within. The fingers that Uriel touched, so that the music from them made us weep, now made her groan as he played the strings of her body back and forth.

She arched her back and made mewling noises now, like a cat. Her breath came thick and fast, in short gasps, as her lips parted to reveal her sharp white teeth. He never failed in his slow, steady rhythm, and I wondered what it was that men felt when the woman they loved shuddered under their touch.

His thought blazed out, and it was more a stark, sharp picture full of blinding heat, than anything so coherent as a thought. I saw him in his mind unbutton his own constricted fullness, lift those hips, and bury himself to the hilt in her, with quick fierce stabs of release. Just as quickly he pushed the thought back, saying to himself, _Whatever kind of monster I am, I am not a ravisher. _

Sweat covered her face and matted her hair. She writhed on the bed, half-rising and swiveling her hips to bring them closer to his tireless hand, while beneath the lids her eyes rolled back. He slowed down his movements to delicate strokes, almost stopping, and the tiny muscles of her eyelids flickered. Now she will do it, I thought. She will open her eyes, enfold him in her arms, and bring him into her body and into her heart.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," Gariela said sorrowfully, raising a face full of pain.

Then the girl sank back onto the bed, hips higher still, and gave a deep gutteral groan that bore no word, no request, no plea, no acknowledgment that another human being lay in that bed with her. Gariela buried her face in the pillow, and I could see the tracks of her bright tears move down the light silk.

From the man poured a great cataract of pity and sorrow, all laced with his compressed desire. He wanted to please her, to give her what she wanted, anything for her. His hand picked up a rhythmic rowing motion now, and I thought of a boat shooting through swift foaming waters, running the course between rocks and the shore, until it burst through into the eddy of calm beyond.

She twisted her hips harder now, mashing herself into his hand, and cried out wildly, inarticulately, as she spasmed. Her breath came in thick, short waves. Gradually she coasted to the shoreline of satiation, and his tired hand came to rest on her flat stomach.

He waited, for one long moment after another. Gariela stood by the side of the bed, her face a silver mask of wet wretchedness. The girl rolled over, away from the man, and he moved his hand out of the way, shy and unsure now. Gariela took the girl's hand and pleaded, begged, buried her face against it, but the girl remained silent and unresponsive, and then it became plain from the regular sound of her breathing that this time, at least, she slept without deception.

He noticed it, too, and when he was sure that she would not stir, carefully extricated himself from the bed. He picked up his clothes in silence and went down to the lower room.

"Sit with her," Gariela said. "I can't any longer."

So I sat and watched the silent, sleeping girl, while Gariela looked dolefully upon the man as he carefully removed his mask and wig. He had sweated into his mask, and the bare rutted skin flamed with irritation. His ragged hair flew as he flung himself onto the couch, and Gariela sat beside him, his abandoned hand grasped in hers, her tears falling freely on his face, into his mouth, into his eyes.

Suddenly he pulled his hand away from her, so she moved her hands up to his head, and stroked the side of his face all twisted and distorted, her stern face glazed with weariness.

"Oh, no," she said. "This won't help, not at all."

Ignoring her, he squirmed into position on the couch, and underneath the blanket began the old and familiar lonely ritual of the night, animated by the memories of the girl's sounds and movements.

In the cold, congealing bleakness afterwards, he quietly began to cry.

Gariela came to stand by my side, and I tried to comfort her. "Neither of us succeeded, Gariela. I don't know why we were sent here tonight. You help them see things clearly, without deception. My gift is to encourage endurance even in the midst of terrible suffering. Somehow I don't think that is going to help him tonight."

"That is exactly what he needs right now."

"I wish I could have helped you."

"There was nothing you could do, Damael. She wouldn't open her eyes. For her he didn't exist. I couldn't make her see him. I couldn't make her recognize him."

"We can't make them do anything, Gariela. We watch, we observe, we speak to them not through their ears but through their souls. We cannot force; we can only guide. One day one of their wisest will say about us that 'we cannot ravish; we can only woo.' "

"There was to have been a child," she said. "The dark man was going to marry her, to promise her everything, to give himself to her in every way, and from that promise, tonight there was to have been a child. Can't you feel him out there, still begging to be born?"

"No, I can't," I said. "People think we are all-knowing. If only they knew."

"Now it is too late," she said in a broken voice. "It was all planned. In 1914, he would have been forty-three years old, a diplomat, who could have turned his country away from bitterness and revenge. Now it is spoiled, all spoiled."

"Gariela, why are you so broken over this failure of two souls to adhere to their purpose? This is nothing new. We have seen this before."

"You haven't seen what I have been shown," she said in a voice as choked as her face.

"I have been given such visions as incentives, too, Gariela. They do not always come to pass."

She gestured to the sad, wet, trembling man. "Let's hold him together," she said, and so we did, lying on either side as he finally slept, holding our hands against the tears that had soaked his poor ruined face, as our own faces burned with cuts made by tiny, invisible knives.

No nightmares came to him that night; instead, he dreamt the girl looked him full in the face, without fear or revulsion, put her soft hands on him in one long responsive caress, and kissed him fervently. Then he slept deeply, with no dreams at all, and now it was our turn to weep.

"Look at his dream, Gariela. It may still come to pass. It may not be too late."

We lay like that all throughout the watches of the night, until the great turning wheels that move the earth and sun on their courses told us it was time to go.

Apollo's wings now blazed bright with the newly-risen sun, and as we rose upon our own, a sound rang from the lowest depth of the fifth cellar up to the glowing peaks. A tinkling music box played a little tune to the accompaniment of cymbals, and it woke the sleeping girl. Rising, she rubbed her naked legs and recalled with shivering pleasure the remnants of what she chose to call an inconsequential dream.


End file.
